Welcome to this year's Official Smogon Tournament, the ninth installment of one of Smogon's most prestigious tournaments. The OST is one of Smogon's longest standing traditions in tournaments and has crowned many great Pokemon players as its champions across three generations. Over the next few months, hundreds of players will compete to the best of their ability as they attempt to join the exclusive ranks of the OST trophy holders. Only one of those players will succeed in their journey and earn the recognition that comes with their victory, along with the iconic OST trophy.

This year, however, there will be more on the line than just a prestigious trophy. In addition to the trophy and the bragging rights that come with it, the winner of the tournament will receive a brand new Nintendo 3DS, and second place will receive a copy of Black 2 or White 2! The top four players will also receive an exclusive Smogon T-shirt.

Matches are to be played on Pokemon Showdown! If both players agree, matches may also be played on Pokemon Online 2.

Standard Rules and Clauses

Sleep Clause: A player cannot put two or more different opposing Pokémon to sleep using attacks that induce sleep to opposing Pokémon.

Species Clause: A player cannot have two of the same Pokémon on their team. For example, a player cannot have two Koffing on his or her team.

Evasion Clause: A player cannot use the moves Double Team or Minimize in their Pokémon's movesets.

OHKO Clause: Players cannot use Horn Drill, Guillotine, Sheer Cold, or Fissure in any of their Pokémon's movesets.

Team Preview: Players must turn on the Team Preview feature where players can view the opposing team's Pokémon and choose their lead Pokémon.

Timer Clause: If a player exhausts the timer, he/she loses.

Uber Clause: Players may not use any items, moves, abilities, or Pokemon that appear on Smogon's OU Ban List. If the tiers change or new items, abilities, moves, or Pokemon become available in the middle of a round, the changes will take effect in the following round. There will be an announcement in the relevant round if this occurs.

New Rules

Activity Decisions / Coin Flips: We are changing the rules for activity / coin flip decisions for this tournament. In the event that there is an uncompleted match at the deadline, it will be coin flipped unless one or both of the players involved in the match specifically request an activity win and explain sufficiently why they deserve to win over their opponent. Attempting to schedule a battle is required in order to receive the win by activity. To make it clear that you are requesting an activity win when you post, you must open your post with "Activity Win Request" in bold.

If you believe your opponent is making an unfair request and that they don't deserve the activity win over you, you can either make your own request or quote their post and explain why they don't deserve it. You should try to make your activity win request posts at least 24 hours before the deadline to give your opponent a reasonable opportunity to contest it with their own activity win request.

Timer / Disconnection Rules: Timer Clause will be strictly enforced for this tournament. This means that the normal disconnection rules found in the Tournament Rules, Guidelines, and Information thread do not apply. If a player disconnects and does not reconnect to their battle before the timer expires, they lose that particular game. This doesn't necessarily mean they lose the entire best-of-three set.

Playing Before Predictions Close: Please avoid playing before the predictions in the predictions tournament close. If you absolutely must play before predictions close, do not report the result in the thread until after the predictions close. Reporting the outcome will result in the deletion of your post. Attempts to nullify the match on the basis that it was played before the allotted time will be ignored and may result in a sportsmanship infraction.

The deadline for Round 6 will be 11:59PM EST on the 10th of February, 2013. Any matches not played by this time will be coin flipped unless one or both players have submitted a request for an activity win.

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There are only sixteen players left in the tournament at this stage. Four of the users you see in the pairings above will receive an exclusive Smogon T-shirt, and two of those four will also be the first to receive more significant prizes than those ever before awarded in a Smogon tournament. Some of the remaining players are certainly more well known than others, but it would be unwise to discount any of them--it would be a difficult feat to have made it this far without having some Pokemon-playing prowess. Good luck to all of the remaining players, and may the best player win!

In the red corner, we have the man who most likely does not deserve to be in round 6 at the moment (though his sisters are hot, but that's a different story). In the Blue corner, we have the man who seemingly broke his Official Tournament curse and has come out swinging this year, recently winning Lavos Tour 14 over BKC. Will DJ Meghan triumph, letting Earthworm win the predictions tournament? Or will gr8astard try to play McMeghan before the allotted time, forcing a rematch? Probably not the latter, because the odds of McMeghan getting a match done early is similar to Whitequeen making a decent post in the SPL forum.

ToF vs. DestinyUnknown

The clash of the UU titans. ToF has risen to fame by winning Smogon Tour 13, something that former UU champion Bluewind could not accomplish. DestinyUnknown is currently 4-0 in SPL and is champion of "who knows the hottest girls" according to the Team Raters (utter bullshit by the way). This should be a match to see! Though if DU wants to win, he could probably offer nudes to ToF in exchange for victories.

WhiteQueen vs. Valentine

The best UU hail player in the world, that's right, the world, plays off against some scrub named Nitro. Whitequeen is known for making top 32 in a previous OST, beating notable players like..... yeah. Valentine is coming off a nice win off of Aldaron, and is hoping to continue his win via 5 Focus Blast misses. Will WhiteQueen be able to say he's legitimately made it farther than top 16 this time? Or will Valentine shake off the fear of McMeghan and push his way towards victory. One thing is for sure, Whitequeen, use HP Fighting.